Star Wars_ Fate of the Jedi 01_ Outcast - Aaron Allston [71]
The combat training hall was comparatively small and very lightly equipped. Staves rested on weapon racks; padded body armor hung on wall hooks. There were padded mats on the floor for practice. The hall could accommodate perhaps two sets of sparring pairs at a time.
Ben asked Tistura Paan, “Don't all your students train in combat?”
“No. The Baran Do are not a militant order like the Jedi.”
“We're not that militant.”
She offered him a smile, showing her grinding palates. “You all study fighting. That's militant. Our role is one of advice and advance warning. The first Baran Do were village seers who had a heightened weather sense and could warn their fellows of impending storms. Over the centuries, they and their descendants corresponded with one another, exchanging techniques and philosophies. The best became personal advisers to the rulers of our kind. Eventually the order became a scholarly one, collecting and cataloging knowledge of the arts and sciences, as well as of the ways of the Force.”
They passed through an angled archway into a meditation chamber furnished only with small circular mats on the floor. The chamber had no viewports and the walls were a soothing, rough-textured gray-white, like the inside of a cloud.
Luke asked, “I've been assuming, but did not ask yesterday, that Master Plo Koon was once a member of your order.”
Tistura Paan nodded. She sat on one of the foam circles and, by gesture, invited Luke and Ben to do likewise. They complied. She said, “Over the centuries, many of the Koon family have been Baran Do. The Force runs strong in that line, as, it is said, in the Skywalker line. It is said of Plo Koon that he never grew weary of living among oxygen breathers, of having to cope with claustrophobic masks and strange faces. Me, I would grow weary of it within weeks or months.”
Ben tapped the transparisteel mask over his own face. “I know how you feel.”
“Your father will be instructed by Master Tila Mong in the hassat-durr technique, which I understand you are not learning. Would you like to get in some fighting practice?”
“You promise not to yank my mask off this time?”
“No promises.”
“Oh, well. Sure.”
Once the two were gone, Luke did not have long to wait. Tila Mong entered, gestured for Luke not to rise, and sat on a pad opposite his. “One Master to another,” she said. “You will not object to an accelerated course, devoid of learning rituals and training artifacts?”
“That would be most agreeable.”
“Well, then. The technique you asked to learn is the ayna-seff technique of the hassat-durr family. In our language, the term hassat-durr means ‘lightning rod.’”
“Why do you call it that?”
“Because if you are not absolutely perfect in your mastery of the technique and perform hassat-durr during a storm, you will be repeatedly struck by lightning and killed.”
Despite himself, Luke laughed. “You're kidding. Right?”
She shook her head. “The hassat-durr techniques suffuse your body with a very low level of electromagnetic radiation. You produce the radiation as an interaction between the Force and your own mental influence over your central nervous system. The energies a student produces early in his study of the technique attract lightning much like a lightning rod. It is for this reason that this skill, like that of dismantling high explosives, is best perfected before it is ever attempted in the field.”
“Other than scrambling brain scans and permitting a rather difficult-to-solve form of suicide by lightning, what do the other hassat-durr techniques do?”
“They can disable one's own prosthetics and electronic implants, can interfere with shock shackles, can cause one to be perceived by animal senses as something terrible or something inoffensive, and can allow one to act as a very effective range-boosting antenna for